The Steel Husk
by Kani-sama
Summary: My take on the Lab 7 Tragedy and Brain Drain losing his body. If you think about it, you could actually put this and my previous two all together to make a Brain Drain trilogy told out of order. Rated T for language and some loosely described dismemberment(?)
1. Chapter 1: Blackness

AN: Kani, here! For those of you who've read my other two stories, I wanna thank you for the support. I'm not really sure how quality this is, as I wrote the majority on it on impulse, but I kinda like what I see, and hope you all enjoy!

There was only darkness….he couldn't feel anything, but he didn't think he wanted to. He couldn't remember much, and the blackness parted only to reveal bits of it. He remembered an explosion, a terrible, terrible explosion. Blood everywhere, parts everywhere, a single red eyeball with an all too familiar cross-pupil flew past him, practically exploding against the wall behind him. A wall of fire approached, he remembered its heat, the sensation of a hot wind like no other. He vaguely acknowledged then that this wind was ripping his body away in huge pieces. A single shard of debris, maybe a piece of an examination table, flies towards his face, and suddenly the heat it gone. There's only cold and black, all in the span of perhaps a second, had he not been psychic, he probably wouldn't have been able to register or remember any of that.

A sound? Yes, there was a sound, a few of them. Terrible screams, gurgled chokes, there was something closer, though. He couldn't register it, regardless of how he tried, but it was so familiar. Something about it made him feel something not quite physical, but not quite emotional, either. The blackness had begun to swallow the rest of his senses slowly. The screams, the horror, and the unidentified sound all faded into white noise, and then silence. The smell of burning flesh, the strongest of which he presumed to be his own, slowly faded into nothing at all. Was he even breathing? He had no idea, probably not.

Time passes. Hours? Minutes? Another mere second? He had no idea, he simply knew time had passed. Things began to slowly return to him, his sense of being real was perhaps the first. He once again could acknowledge he was breathing, but not naturally. He could feel a mask on his face, forcing air into his lungs, something cold and metallic over his ears, it slowly graced him with hearing once more.

Two voices, a man's and a woman's, he recognised the latter's.

"His lungs aren't salvageable, we're going to need to replace them."

"How much more can even /be/ replaced?!"

"Please try and calm down, Ma'am, we're doing all we can, but most of his body was completely destroyed, and...we're no longer sure of when he could wake up, or if he will ever wake up."

He tried to say something, but his voice was an arid fire within his throat. The faintest of whispers was all he could manage, and then the blackness recalled him once more.

AN: So that was Chapter One! I'm trying to space this the best I can. Also, if it isn't too much trouble, could you tell me in the reviews what sort of name you would like Brain Drain to have? This will be used in both "Soda Fountain" and here, since a canon real name was never established. Thank you!


	2. Chapter 2: A Dream?

He awoke to something that confused him greatly, he was in Lab 7, but not as he last recalled. Everything was still intact, no bodies, but scientists. Everyone was still doing as they normally do, every floor was mopped, every employee was gaunt, their rinky-dink soda fountain was surrounded by The Last Hope, hell, he even had a pack of smokes resting on his desk by his action figure. Once all this set in, he realised he was being shaken awake.

"Hey, are you alright? You seemed like you were having a really nasty dream."

He glanced up to meet a pair of bright red eyes in little wire glasses. It was Christmas, Christine, his girlfriend for a good while, now.

"I'm fine," he replied, "Just a bad dream, I guess…." He stood upward, running a hand through his hair before lighting a cigarette.

"Wanna talk about it?"

"Not yet, just give me a bit to destress," With that, he swished the cigarette over to the corner of his mouth, and planted a small kiss on her temple. This gesture brought an expression he could only describe as adorable before she spoke again.

"Alright, but I'm holding you to it. We can't all read minds and know exactly what's up."

He'd give a smirk with a single breath of laughter, her concern always had such a warmth.

Warmth…..heat...hot winds….he felt it all briefly as he took a long drag, ashing it on the tray that sat comfortably on his desk. He could see it all now, but all besides these sensations was quickly giving way to the fog of a woken mind.

"I saw the lab...it wasn't pretty. Something went wrong somewhere, no, someone royally screwed it up. Whole damn place went up like a powder keg. I saw some things I don't think I'd be able to handle in real life...nothing in the Psychic Ward came close to that sort of thing."

Christmas remained silent, she had no idea what to say, the whole thing seemed so unreal. In an attempt to say something personal rather than something professional, she gently embraced him from the side, sighing some. "Look at it this way: it was just a dream, and you had the luxury of waking up."

((A/N: Kani here! Chapter Two is finally where I'm happy with it. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the sort of "Writer's High" I got as my hands flew on this little keyboard here. Still very open to suggestions on Brain Drain's name, so don't be a stranger! Message and comment!))


	3. Chapter 3: Tasteless

An operating room, there's not a sound sans the hum and beep of monitors, and the shuffle of a doctor's feet. The subject lies on the cold steel of an operating table, or what is left of him. Warm flesh is replaced with cold metal, and a scalp of hair replaced with a plexiglass dome encasing what is perhaps the most developed brain of the world, capable of influences in the material plane, bound by only his own imagination. Standing over him is the woman he loved. She was the first to hear it, and the only to see it. The scrape of a needle, once a fingertip, scrapes against the table in the form of a twitch. Her face went from wild shock to near cosmic relief, calling a doctor over at once to explain.

"He moved! He scratched the table!"

The doctor glanced from one monitor to the next, clearly impressed. "His brain activity has spiked some, but he doesn't quite seem to be conscious just yet. We'll just have to wait and see…"

The woman leaned downward some, upon the stark metal face, upon its dull, red lights where eyes once stood. Her voice is choked, but hopeful. "Listen. Please hear me, wake up."

"Brain Drain? Brain Drain! I'm talking to you, Genius!"

He glanced up, rather startled, almost as if he had been somewhere else. He was at the soda fountain, his eyes finally settled on the speaker. Valentine, Valerie, one of Christmas' good friends, and her second in command. They've never been a pair to get along. "What? Sorry, I think I zoned out a bit…"

"You don't say?" She rolled her eyes at his response, and for a moment, an instant, he saw something rattling. She had only a bloody socket where her right eye once stood, the optic nerve hanging out and over like a rubber band, her mask was tattered, revealing her face to be in a twisted gape, from it was a scream of pure agony, and it was all gone. "I asked if you were sick. You're pastier and sweatier than usual."

"...Under a little stress is all…"

"Stress over what? You've got a day off and you've been sleeping at your desk all day."

"Dreams and daydreams alike….I've been having them all day, and they're a bit on the draining side."

She lowered her mask a bit to convey a mildly concerned expression, when was he ever one to be freaked out over a dream? "That so…?"

A quick nod, followed by a drink floating over to him without having ever been touched. "They're...pretty graphic, even compared to the failed experiments."

"That bad?" She'd never heard him compare anything to those who failed in acquiring his psychic ability. The vague memory of his retelling a grisly fatality served as reason.

"That bad. Like hundreds of body parts and lives being flung off or lost at high speed. Most everyone died...myself included."

"Venus shit, John….that's the sort of thing you're dreaming up? All that mess didn't make you some sociopath, did it?" She reached upward to knock on his forehead a few times. It sounded different, metallic, almost, but he seemed to be the only one who noticed. Just what was going on…? The whole thing was feeling more and more like a…

"Dream…"

"Huh?"  
"Hm? Ah, nothing…it slipped." He took a drink, and noticed that it had no taste to it, no carbonation, either. Come to think of it, his smoke didn't have any sort of flavour, either. He couldn't even remember the nicotine sensation.

"What the…?"


	4. Chapter 4: Once Again

"Yo, girls!" a particularly high and perky voice shot out from further towards the exit, the girl poking through was Patty, the wild card of The Last Hope, but to him, she was the spaz, "Debriefing time!" She then shot off into the direction she pointed, prompting the others to follow. Christmas promised to talk to him later and pecked his cheek, and he noticed there was no sensation behind it at all. Just as she started to turn, and Valentine gave her usual departure of rolled eyes, perhaps more exasperated than usual at his recent breakdown, an abrupt shouting had focused all their attention towards the power core. What was said exactly was unheard, but what followed it most certainly made it irrelevant. In an instant, he saw it all once again, and with so much more. He heard the pained cry of a fleeing Christmas as a piece of shrapnel sliced along her face, a wound that would scar her, but miraculously avoid her eye itself. He heard her barked order to run, but it was drowned by the pained scream of Valentine. As Hallow had begun to yank her away, a great deal of the explosive force made her right eye shoot forth like a champagne cork. He saw it fly past him, exploding like a paintball just behind him, he acknowledged that the combination of blood and saline had slapped against the back of his coat, but he didn't feel that, either. The whistling of the force grew ever louder as he was partly consumed. He knew he was in shock when he didn't feel his arm ripped off at the shoulder, or when the rest began to peel away in chunks. Coming at him, almost in slow motion, was the piece of an examination table. He could only watch in horror as it collided. He knew how the hit had crushed his face, and a good degree of his skull, with such vivid detail he could have sworn that he had seen it from a third person point of view. He felt his glasses shatter, the panes destroying his eyes, he was a chunk of barely functional meat, flung out of the facility and onto the ground. He heard screams, choked cries of those who drowned in their own blood, and something else. Closer. This time, he finally could decipher it. It was crying. Someone was crying over him, begging him to stay with her. To wake up.

 _Wake up._

 _Wake up…_

 _Wake up….._


End file.
